“A woman without a man, they said
Is a fish without a bike
But a man without a woman
Is that fish upon a spike!”
From The Revels of Renunciation by Bachchoo
I shall be with you whatever!” So it was written. A note from a bereaved lover? A note to a bereaved lover? An epitaph? Antony to Cleopatra? Madri to Pandu? None of the above. It’s the first sentence of a memo that Tony Blair, former Prime Minister of Britain, sent to George W. Bush, the contemporary President of America. He was alluding to his possible determination to commit Britain to an alliance with the US when they embarked on a second war with Saddam Hussein’s Iraq. Today, 13 years after the Bush-Blair war was launched, Iraq remains a broken, factionalised state. Last week, a terrorist bomb in Baghdad killed 250 people. The Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, the death cult, has captured swathes of its territory, though an international effort claims to be driving it back.
On June 6, in London Sir John Chilcot submitted to the public his report on the Iraq war, its origins, its course, the aftermath and most importantly of all, the role of Blair, the British intelligence services, other ministers in the Blair Cabinet, the involvement or non-involvement of the United Nations or the failure of military equipment. The report took seven years to compile and is 2.6 million words long. The length of time the report took to compile and publish became a standing joke in Britain. It was eagerly anticipated as the nation wanted to know what it would say about Blair’s decision to go to war. This anticipation was universally tinged with cynicism. Sir John Chilcot would, as a member of the establishment, possibly a person who would try and steady the ship of state and not rock it, produce a long-winded whitewash of the former Prime Minister and the decision to go to war.
The cynics were wrong. Sir John’s comprehensive report has without prejudice criticised and condemned every aspect of the engagement with Iraq, from Blair’s illegal and unnecessary decision to side with the US and to rush into a war when all other means of putting pressure on Saddam to negotiate on the demands of the international community had not been exhausted. Chilcot goes on to criticise in the most severe terms, the unpreparedness of the Bush and Blair administrations for the aftermath of the overthrow of Saddam. The country deteriorated into sectarian and factional violence from which, after 13 years, it hasn’t recovered. As the report became public, Blair spoke to the public and the press for two hours.
He stuck to some of his guns and surrendered others in the light of the report’s irrefutable accusations. Chilcot said he had taken decisions about going to war without sharing the information on which he based the decision with his Cabinet or with Parliament. His justice minister had told him that going to war without the sanction of the United Nations was possibly illegal. Chilcot surmises that Blair put pressure on this minister to revise that opinion and sanction his determination to join Bush “whatever”. Blair said he accepted sole responsibility for the allies’ unpreparedness for the aftermath of the regime-change conflict. He apologised to the nation for the disastrous and fatal consequences of the ground troops not having the protective vehicles and armour they needed to fight the guerrillas who emerged during the post-Saddam occupation. He insisted that his decisions were taken on the evidence he received from the intelligence services while admitting that this information was misleading and wrong.
The main point of contention, ever since the controversy over the Iraq war was first ignited was the case of the “dodgy dossier”. This was a report that Blair told Parliament at the time it was compiled by the intelligence services. He claimed in Parliament that its conclusions were “beyond doubt”. The dossier said that Saddam Hussein was assembling chemical, biological and nuclear weapons which could be deployed against Britain and cause devastation within 45 minutes of being launched. This was his central justification for taking Britain into a first-strike war. Even before the war began opponents of Britain’s involvement alleged that the dossier from MI6, the intelligence agency that compiled it, had erroneous information and even that Blair and his press officer Alistair Campbell had compelled MI6 to “sex it up” — make it more terrifying so as to justify going to war.
As the war progressed and the US and UK troops occupied Iraqi territory it became apparent that Saddam had no “weapons of mass destruction” (WMDs) as the dossier had claimed. Chilcot concluded that Blair and Campbell had not “sexed up” the dossier and its claims but the contrary opinion persists: there was pressure on the secret services to deliver a damning dossier. The relatives of the soldiers and personnel who died in the war are now demanding that Blair face legal charges. The most extreme opinion calls him a “terrorist”. The slightly less virulent opinion wants him to be tried for “war crimes”. Lawyers at the International court of Law in The Hague are reported to be investigating possible grounds for prosecution. No one has yet mentioned under which statute Blair can be accused of criminal activity.
He can certainly be impeached by the Westminster Parliament for violations of the UK Constitution, even though this is an unwritten constitution and relies on precedent and tradition. Ordering troops to war before getting the full consent of Parliament is certainly such a violation. Blair persists in reminding the nation that a Prime Minister has to take decisions and he was doing his duty by the country in doing so. There are, of course, other leading politicians in other countries who once they are no longer in office can be indicted for the “illegal” deaths — be they through an international conflict or even a local murderous pogrom.
